(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama may be laying the groundwork to abandon his quest for an immediate Israeli settlement freeze and instead try to get Israel and the Palestinians directly into peace negotiations.
Obama emerged from talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials on Tuesday without the orchestrated set of steps that he had hoped would allow him to announce a resumption of peace negotiations, which have been on ice since December.
Instead, he was reduced to stressing the urgency of ending the six-decade conflict and exhorting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to show "flexibility and common sense and sense of compromise."
The outcome, analysts said, suggested the limitations of trying to secure confidence-building steps in advance and may presage a drive to go directly to full-blown negotiations even though neither side yet seems ready for them.
"It's clearly a lost cause," Daniel Kurtzer, a retired U.S. diplomat who now teaches at Princeton University, said of Obama's effort to get Israel, the Palestinians and Arab states to make reciprocal gestures before the resumption of talks.
Washington wanted Israel to halt all building of Jewish settlements on the West Bank, which it has occupied since the 1967 Middle East War. It also wanted the Palestinians to do more to prevent violence against Israelis and Arab nations to take steps toward normalizing relations with the Jewish state.
None of these were in place as Obama met Netanyahu and Abbas first separately and then in a trilateral meeting, the highest-level talks between the two sides in nearly a year.
Both sides are at odds over a starting point for any future negotiations on core issues such as the borders and the future of Jerusalem and a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu says he is not obligated by the position of the previous government and has resisted freezing settlements.
"They are trying to finesse settlements now," said Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel. "Having been unable to reach an agreement to freeze settlements in a meaningful way, they are going to leave it out there as a disagreement between us but not as a road block or an impediment to negotiations."
Israeli officials appeared delighted that Obama said only that Israel should "restrain" its construction of settlements on occupied land in the West Bank rather than tougher demands from U.S. officials that it freeze such building entirely.
"Ask the Americans," Netanyahu replied, when asked by reporters what Obama meant by restraint.
Obama emerged from talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials on Tuesday without the orchestrated set of steps that he had hoped would allow him to announce a resumption of peace negotiations, which have been on ice since December.
Instead, he was reduced to stressing the urgency of ending the six-decade conflict and exhorting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to show "flexibility and common sense and sense of compromise."
The outcome, analysts said, suggested the limitations of trying to secure confidence-building steps in advance and may presage a drive to go directly to full-blown negotiations even though neither side yet seems ready for them.
"It's clearly a lost cause," Daniel Kurtzer, a retired U.S. diplomat who now teaches at Princeton University, said of Obama's effort to get Israel, the Palestinians and Arab states to make reciprocal gestures before the resumption of talks.
Washington wanted Israel to halt all building of Jewish settlements on the West Bank, which it has occupied since the 1967 Middle East War. It also wanted the Palestinians to do more to prevent violence against Israelis and Arab nations to take steps toward normalizing relations with the Jewish state.
None of these were in place as Obama met Netanyahu and Abbas first separately and then in a trilateral meeting, the highest-level talks between the two sides in nearly a year.
Both sides are at odds over a starting point for any future negotiations on core issues such as the borders and the future of Jerusalem and a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu says he is not obligated by the position of the previous government and has resisted freezing settlements.
"They are trying to finesse settlements now," said Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel. "Having been unable to reach an agreement to freeze settlements in a meaningful way, they are going to leave it out there as a disagreement between us but not as a road block or an impediment to negotiations."
Israeli officials appeared delighted that Obama said only that Israel should "restrain" its construction of settlements on occupied land in the West Bank rather than tougher demands from U.S. officials that it freeze such building entirely.
"Ask the Americans," Netanyahu replied, when asked by reporters what Obama meant by restraint.